Here’s a quick tip or really more a reminder. I’m heading to Amsterdam later today to play a live show. I have a long list of things to do before I head out the door. Here’s two of them. They may seem obvious but either can fix a disaster. First, I back up my computer using SuperDuper!. I plug-in an external hard drive and make a clone of my laptop drive. My laptop is about to fly around the world. It can be stolen, dropped, confiscated, doused in beer and a lot of other things. If anything does happen I can get back to work day one when I return with the clone drive. The other possible life saver is making a backup live show. I record a run through of my live show and make an MP3 of the just the music. I throw that on a USB stick. If my laptop dies or doesn’t make it to the show at the very least I can stand on stage and give the fans “something”. I use a USB stick and MP3 because a lot of new CD and DJ mixers will read those formats. It’s better than not performing at all. In 23 years I’ve never had to use these emegency measures but that won’t stop me from preparing them every time.

“SuperDuper is the wildly acclaimed program that makes recovery painless, because it makes creating a fully bootable backup painless. Its incredibly clear, friendly interface is understandable, easy to use, and SuperDuper’s built-in scheduler makes it trivial to back up automatically.” – shirt-pocket.com

I use Carbon Copy Clonner which is excelent, in fact is almost like having a secound MAC with you all the time…
I have had problems before, and all I needed to do is ask someone for they´re laptop (doesn’t work with PPC) or even iMac etc…) plug the drive Reboot, press ALT and choose the drive .. BOOM .. everything is running just like if it was your own… AWESOME … for this purpose I use a FF800 drive but it will work with USB2 (just a little slower ) … I really really recomend you to try this out ..
I generally say it’s my spare mac for €100 …
Cheers,